THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

a real good feel, if you know what I mean. In my personal experience, next to broad shoulders, a good set of abs pretty much tops every lady’s wish list.”           
    “Dammit, Eli, I don’t care how you do it! Just for God’s sake do it .”
    Eli’s face softened. “Look, man, I’m just trying to show you why this plan of yours can’t work.”
    “It will work.”
    “Come on. I haven’t laid a finger on her, and already you can’t stand it.”
    Delano shook his head vigorously. “You’re quite mistaken. What I feel for Ainsley is responsibility. The danger she finds herself in, her social isolation, her anxiety about a non-existent infection, the removal from her ordinary world … it’s all my doing. The kindest thing I could possibly do at this point is put you in her path. I just don’t need to hear the details. I feel guilty enough as it is for manipulating her.”
    “And well you should.”
    “And well I should,” he agreed. “That’s my burden to live with. In the meantime, you’ll be good for her. Hell, you’ll be good for each other.” As he said the words, he realized how true they were. Eli and Ainsley. They were perfectly matched. Aside from their shared nursing background, they were both handsome physical specimens, both single and unattached, both quick to laugh. A new emptiness opened up inside, lending his voice more bite. “You must do this for me, Eli.”
    His friend closed his eyes for an interminable moment, as though consulting some inner voice, or perhaps the voice of some long-dead Comanche ancestor. “Okay.” He opened his eyes. “I’ll do it.”
    Delano let the breath he was holding escape. “Thank you.”
    Eli inclined his head in acknowledgement. “You’ll owe me one. Oh, and one more thing.”
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t try to sell me any more of this horseshit about how you don’t care. Your guts are gonna feel like you chowed down a metric ton of ground glass, and we both know it.”
    Delano cursed, employing a particularly loathsome word he hadn’t used in a good sixty years.
    “Exactly,” Eli agreed. “Now, sun’s almost up. We should both hit the sack. I can bring you up to date on St. Cloud tomorrow.”
     
    “Rise and shine, cupcake.”
    Ainsley lifted her head and squinted at the imposing figure looming in her doorway. Eli? In her bedroom? Calling her Cupcake? Oh, thank goodness. She was still dreaming. She rolled onto her side, drew her knees up and burrowed deeper into the pillows, striving to get her dream back on track.
    “Come on, sleepy head, it’s way past noon.”
    She opened bleary eyes again, tracking Eli as he moved across her bedroom to the window. She’d tossed and turned for hours, finally falling into a light sleep punctuated by highly erotic dreams. Dreams of Delano, his hands all over her body, her hands on him…
    How the devil had Eli made his way into her dream?
    Then Eli swept the heavy curtains back. The dazzling light of midday flooded the room, sending a dagger of pain to her brain.
    Groaning, she pulled the covers over her head. “Go away, Eli. You’re wrecking my dream.”
    “Ouch. You’re wrecking my ego.”
    She snorted beneath the covers. “I think it’ll survive.”
    “No need for sarcasm.”
    “Okay, I’m sorry. Now, would you please go away?”
    The edge of her bed depressed. “Sorry, angel.”
    Wait a minute, Eli in her room? She jack-knifed up to find Eli actually sitting there, on her actual bed. “Eli? What is it? Is something wrong?”
    “Something’s very wrong.”
    He said the words sternly, but the tone didn’t match the dancing light in his eyes or the suggestion of an upward tilt to his lips. The latter was enough to make the knot of anxiety dissolve.
    “Okay, out with it, buster. What the heck is so very wrong?”
    “Delano tells me that in all the time you’ve been here, he hasn’t taken you to see anything of Montreal. A beautiful woman sitting up here in this penthouse while the city waits down there? To my way of thinking, that’s just plain wrong. And I aim to fix that, starting right now.” He gave her a thump on the thigh. “So shake a leg, honey.”
    He stood again, and she gaped up at him. “You’re going to take me out?”
    “I thought we’d start with le Vieux Montréal .”
    Ainsley grinned. Touring Old Montreal in broad daylight like an ordinary visitor to the city? “Oh, can we?”
    He feigned offence. “Did I not just invite you?”
    “I mean, is